Lunar News Network

NASA Budget News

Here is some more news on the budget front (News.com - NASA: Limited budget could lead to gap in manned missions):

Bush requested $17.3 billion for NASA for the 2008 fiscal year, a 3.1 percent increase over his request for the previous year. The president's proposed budget was made public on Monday.

While Griffin acknowledged that NASA is one of the few non-defense agencies to receive 1.3 percent budget growth instead of 1 percent, he said that 3 percent is still only on par with inflation.

[...]

If Congress' past behavior is any indication, NASA will not even get the 3.1 percent increase, Griffin said.

I'm really afraid of where the "do more with less" strategy is leading us. Do we really think we can design and build a next-generation spacecraft, return to the Moon and then go on to Mars, and do it all while cutting the budget? On what planet does that make sense?  Of course, the real  point of that  report is the concern about a  five year gap between the end of shuttle service and the debut of the Orion craft in which the U.S. will effectively have no manned space program. Is this acceptable?

House Approves Budget

Here is some very bad news regarding the NASA budget, the cuts recommended by the Appropriations Committee have been approved by the full House (St. Petersburg Times - House easily passes huge spending bill):

A must-pass bill covering about one-sixth of the federal budget swept through the House on Wednesday. A sizable chunk of Republicans joined virtually all Democrats in approving spending increases for education, veterans and the AIDS battle in Africa. [...] The White House has signaled that President Bush would sign the bill despite cuts to his requests for NASA, foreign aid and communities affected by the latest round of military base closings.

Thanks to Space Politics for the link to that news report, it's a great source for beltway news. I can't think anything optimistic to say about this situation except to hope that maybe the Senate would not approve it for some reason and the NASA funding could be saved in conference when they try to reconcile the two bills. Given the current political environment I don't see that happening, but we can hope.

NASA Funding Cut?

To follow-up on Darnell's comment on an earlier post, here is a report from Space Daily on the proposed NASA budget cut:

The House Appropriations Committee has passed its version of the 2007 federal government budget. In it, funding for NASA was cut by $550 million (approximately 3.2%) from the amount proposed by the Bush Administration last February. The $16.2 billion budgeted for NASA for 2007 is the same as the amount approved for 2006. [...] The budget includes cuts of $576 million from the Moon-to-Mars program, $94million from shuttle and space station, and $78 million from NASA's Science programs. [...] It is too soon to tell how NASA will deal with the cuts if they are passed by the full Congress. But it does seem that the plans to get humans back to the Moon and on to Mars will at the very least be delayed -- if not outright lost.

The important thing to note here is that this is merely a committee recommendation that now must go to the full House for a vote and once that it is done it must then be approved by the Senate and then signed into law by President Bush, who of course has an opportunity to veto it. So, send out a call to all the space community citizen lobbyists to contact your legislators and express your support for continued funding for the Vision for Space Exploration.